Against All Odds
by pakiprincess
Summary: Maxine and Dominick Ride were a couple who worked together in Itex. One day, they die mysteriously, and no one knows what happened to them. 18 years later, enter Max Martinez and Nick Walker, seniors who hate each other. After finding out that they're reincarnates of the Ride couple, it's up to them to solve the Rides' murder and finish what they started. Will they survive it? FAX.


**Prologue**

"Come on, Max! Don't stop now!"

The couple had been running long and hard through the forest for several days. Their pursuers were not far behind; it was only a matter of time before they caught the two.

Max had paused a few seconds ago. She bent at her knees where she rested her hands. Her once blond hair was now matted and dirtied, and exhaustion showed through her brown eyes. "Please, Nick," she panted. "Go on without me, I don't know how much longer I can do this!" The woman felt like she would collapse any second.

The dark-haired man, who was a couple meters ahead of her, came back to his wife's side. Nick knelt down to her height and made her look at his weary, onyx eyes. He spoke carefully, "You can _do _this Max. I know you can. And besides, " he swept back his hair and cracked a weary smile, "You can't get rid of me that easily." Max grinned back, despite the all the tension involved.

He helped her up, and all of a sudden, a shout echoed through the woods. "There they are! I see them!"

Nick cursed. "They've caught up, let's go!" Hand in hand, the couple sprinted faster as the sound of men running and dogs barking came closer and closer.

As they ran towards their salvation, Max stumbled over a branch, causing them to lose even more speed than before. Nick quickly helped her back up again and they continued to tear through the forest, hoping that they would outrun them, that some how they would make it out alive…

But it was too late.

Their chasers were now right behind them. Max whipped her head around to see a man dressed in black holding a gun, approaching them slowly.

"More are coming," he said calmly. "Just tell me what you know, and no one will be hurt. Are we not friends?"

Pain filled Max's eyes. She hated that man who stood in front of her with a passion. "You-you _traitor!_" she hissed. "How dare you call us your friends? We…we trusted you! We believed you! And this is how you repay us?"

Nick gathered Max in his arms and glared at him. "We never want to see you again," he spat out.

The armed man smiled sadly. "As you wish," he said, raising his gun and pointing it at Nick's chest. He placed his finger on the trigger and just as he was about to pull it—

_Bam!_

Surprised, he looked down at his chest to see blood pooling on his chest. The gun fell out of his hands as he looked back up at them. There was pistol in Max's shaking hands that was not there before.

"I'm not sorry." Her voice shook, but there was a steel in her eyes, the kind that replaced the innocence once present. The man fell to his knees and slumped to the ground.

Nick breathed a sigh of relief. "Good riddance," he said. "Now, let's keep moving, he said more—" Suddenly, he pushed Max out of his arms.

A gunshot rang throughout the forest. Max was about to ask Nick if he was hurt, but her husband had fallen to the ground, his features frozen into a permanent scream. A bullet wound had appeared on his head, and his now glassy eyes looked up at the night sky. Thick, crimson blood pooled over his forehead and seeped onto the dirt, creating a puddle that appeared black in the night. His dirty, matted watch read 12:21 AM.

Max choked back a sob. "Nick?" She fell to his side and, clutching his body, began to rock back and forth. "Oh, _Nick_," the woman wept while realizing something painful.

_That was supposed to be me._

Another bullet grazed the side of Max's head, but she was too overwhelmed to feel the pain. Knowing that she was about to die any second, she still remained at Nick's side. If one of them went down, so would the other.

She heard footsteps approach and turned her face to see two more people coming closer to her, both armed with guns. "There's no point!" she screamed, trails of tears still running down her face. "It's gone, you'll never find it!"

One of the snipers, a woman, raised her forty-five and shot Max in the chest. The blond collapsed onto her husband's corpse, dying exactly two minutes after him.

Maxine and Dominick Ride were dead, and their secrets died with them.

Or did they?

One of the nurses rushed the screaming woman in the wheelchair into a room, her partner running along side his wife. "It's okay, hon', we're almost there!"

The young lady, a nine-months-pregnant banker named Anne Walker, wailed, "Just get it out already! I can't take it anymore!"

"Don't worry just breathe, alright? In, out, in, out, like we practiced, remember?" The man continued to try and calm his wife, as her contractions got shorter and shorter. After few hours of labor, Anne Walker gave birth to a baby boy at exactly 12:21 AM.

"What shall we call him?" her husband, David, asked.

Anne beamed widely as she bounced the child in her arms. "Let's call him…Nicholas, after your father. Nick for short," she suggested.

He returned her smile. "Sounds good to me."

In the same hospital, on the same floor, and in a separate room, Valencia and Ricardo Martinez were in a similar situation as the Walkers. Only this time, the process had involved long, hard hours of pure agony and the result was a girl. The couple had decided on a name months ago: Maximum, or "the greatest." Maximum Martinez was born at 12:23 AM, two minutes after Nicholas Walker.

And this is how the story of the two Maxes and the two Nicks began.

**A/N- HI GUYS LONG TIME NO SEE HUH. It's me again :) Um, a few things I want to state:**

**1. This is NOT going to be regularly updated. I will be writing out the whole story first, and then I will be regularly uploading. The only reason I put up this prologue is because I do not want anyone stealing this idea or writing a story like this before I do. Basically, it's the whole "I thought of it first kinda thing."**

**2. PLEASE READ BECAUSE OF A FIGHT BY GREEN-EYED-WONDER 0-0. Contrary to what many of you think, she is NOT writing the story by herself. We are writing it together, and I actually wrote the last chapter by myself. To those of you who ARE reading it, it will be updated very, very soon :) And there are only 7-8 more chapters left!**

**Bye, everyone!**

**-pakiprincess**


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